Carpentries Instructors’ meeting
- Monday, December 7, 2020
- 9:00-10:00 AM
Present:
Albin, Brooks-Kieffer, Deakyne, Everman, Koseva (guest), Trana, Zipper
Agenda
- Logistics for Data Carpentry Genomics
- Data Carpentry Social Sciences for Spring 2021
Discussions
Logistics for Data Carpentry Genomics
Instructors
Boryana agreed to teach the first section, Project Organization and Management for Genomics. Jamene will add her to the list of instructors and notify The Carpentries so she receives AWS instance updates (Post-meeting update: this is done).
Boryana offered a few notes from her experience teaching this workshop:
- A-ha moments were different for learners and instructors in DC-G than other Carpentries workshops.
- Recommends reviewing the Bash lesson before going through the bioinformatics content; the lesson is a bit different from the SWC Bash lesson and includes commands and flags not taught in SWC.
Learner Recruitment
Jamene sent the announcement to several KU departments and groups on Friday afternoon (12/04). By the time of this meeting on Monday morning, all but 1 of the 15 seats was taken. Clearly there’s a demand for this content; no further learner recruitment needed. Depending on the number of helpers, we may be able to up the number of seats to 20 or at least offer seats to waitlisted learners.
There was a suggestion to review learners’ answers to the registration questions to confirm that folks understand they are signing up for a Genomics-specific workshop (Post-meeting update: this is done; results sent to the instructors).
Helper Recruitment
Jamene has received 1 contact but no follow up; Elizabeth has contacted several people and has suggestions for a few more. Boryana may be able to recruit someone she works with. Matt may/not be able to help.
From Boryana’s memory of teaching DC-G, her session had 5 bioinformatics specialists as helpers for about 20 learners.
Helper Orientation
Because helpers for this workshop may not have seen a Carpentries workshop before, and because the infrastructure for this workshop is different, the group agreed that it would be important to hold a helper orientation, with the following goals:
- Orient to Carpentries workshop norms
- Orient to Zoom workshop methods
- Log on to the AWS instance
- Locate the data
- Test the programs used in the workshop
- See differences between Mac and Windows experiences for this workshops
We need to be mindful of KU’s closure during the week of 12/27-01/02 and not schedule anything during this time. Target goal for helper orientation is 12/16-12/22. Jamene will confirm with The Carpentries that we will be able to get AWS test instances that early (Post-meeting update: yes, this is possible and will happen by 12/16).
Learner Software Install Office Hours
Because of the substantial break, the group agreed that the best time for these is the morning of 01/04, the first day of the workshop. Jamene will run this if no one else wants to, but is happy to show someone else how to do it. The install list is short:
- A spreadsheet program (Open Office or Libre Office if Excel is not an option)
- PuTTY and PSCP for Windows users
R and RStudio are not required for learner installation because the lesson has this work happening in the AWS instance. There are other installations called out in the lesson materials that we would probably want to recommend people do in advance of the lesson, if not in advance of the workshop:
There are also a number of csv/tsv files for learners to download and open during individual lessons. Depending on the instructors’ plans, we might want to make a GitHub repo to collect all of these files for ease of download.
Access to AWS
Jamene will request that instructors and helpers get access to test instances from The Carpentries as early as mid-December (Post-meeting update: this is done; expect access 12/16). Casey has recently gotten an AWS crash course for work duties and can walk anyone who wants to through provisioning their own instance. Cost is about $1.50 per day when the instance is running.
Data Carpentry Social Sciences for Spring 2021
Not a lot of conversation about this topic; folks are busy with end of year stuff, and this planning can wait until after DC-G.
Notes by JBK